Tech for Good #41 – An ethical approach to creating tech for good

With technology continuing to develop at a rapid pace and entering our lives, the issue of trust becomes critical and requires us to take a hard look at the ethics behind developing technologies. Some of the challenges we see emerging include privacy concerns, algorithmic bias, the economic impact of new technologies and their sustainability, and many others.

While ethics as such is a broad subject, we want to use this month’s Tech for Good meetup to focus on the ethical development of new technology, and provide you with a few practical solutions into how we can embed an ethical approach in creating and deploying tech for good.

This month’s Tech for Good meetup is hosted at Campus London, Google’s space for entrepreneurs, who are kindly sponsoring our drinks (which is why this event is free to attend).

We’ll be hearing from three excellent speakers:

Sam Brown, DotEveryone (www.twitter.com/doteveryoneuk)

Sam is currently a Programme Manager at Doteveryone focused on Responsible Technology and the Tech Industry. Sam recently moved to London from the tech industry in Canada where she spent several years working within FinTech in business management, internal communications and strategy. She was also a National Business and Human Rights Coordinator for Amnesty International Canada for almost a decade, working on many campaigns related to business accountability.

Doteveryone is working to make the next iteration of the technology industry with Responsible Technology as the new normal.

Jenni Parker, Humanly (www.twitter.com/jenniparker57; www.twitter.com/designhumanly)
Jenni is the founder and director of Humanly, a design studio specialising in human-centred design for social impact. She is passionate about the power of design to address some of the world's most pressing problems, and was awarded the title of Service Designer of the Year 2015 by the Young Digital Leader Awards.

Jenni will talk about ethical and inclusive approaches for carrying out user research, co-creation and prototyping activities with vulnerable groups, that create meaningful and rewarding experiences for all involved.

Maliha Khan (www.twitter.com/MalihKhan)

Dr Maliha Khan international development practitioner who focuses on measurement and accountability systems; in designing initiatives for social change; and in leading organizational change processes. She is the founder of Daira, a boutique client centred start-up that focuses on enabling organizations to make better decisions using data, analysis and insights for international development. She is a passionate advocate for responsible data issues and has worked on the responsible data policies for Oxfam International and Catholic Relief Services, and leading sessions at various international conferences.

Maliha’s talk will focus on “principle driven responsible data” – organisations are increasingly grappling with "going digital” and the challenges this brings around personal data, protection, privacy and use. Maliha will present the emerging principles of responsible data: transparency and accountability, privacy and security and quality data for decision making, as well as talk about the implications of responsible data for small organisation’s operations and practice and encourage leaders and decision makers to ask the ‘right questions’.

We’ll also have our usual roundup of community announcements, so message us if you have any news, jobs, events or opportunities that you’d like to share with this group.

*Many thanks to Campus London for kindly hosting us. Check out their website for more info: campus.co/london/en